A legacy system can cause a myriad of problems, such as exorbitant maintenance costs, data silos that prevent integration between systems, lack of compliance to governmental regulations, and reduced security. These issues eventually outweigh the convenience of continuing to use an existing legacy system.
1. Maintenance is costly (and futile)
Maintenance is to expected with any system, but the cost of maintaining a legacy system is extensive. Maintenance keeps the legacy system running, but at the same time, the company is throwing good money after bad. The status quo is maintained, but there’s never a chance for growth with the legacy system.
At some point, there won’t be any more support for a legacy system and there won’t be any more updates. If the system fails, there’s nowhere to turn.
Think of a weak dam with holes that you keep plugging and plugging, yet water keeps seeping through. A legacy system continues to cost a company money for maintenance while never providing new and innovative services.
2. Data is stuck in silos
Data silos are a byproduct of legacy systems. Many older systems were never designed to integrate with each other in the first place, and many legacy software solutions are built on frameworks that can’t integrate with newer systems. This means that each legacy system is its own data silo.
Modern software is unparalleled when it comes to gaining deep data insights and supporting important business decisions with verifiable information. Legacy software, on the other hand, usually isn’t. That’s because it was built at a time when big data wasn’t necessarily a thing and capturing/processing it wasn’t the norm.
In addition to siloing the data they contain, legacy systems keep the departments that use them out of data integration happening in the rest of the organization. If one team maintains a legacy system while the rest of the company upgrades, that one team is isolated from business intelligence and insights being created in integrated systems.
3. Compliance is much harder
Organizations today must abide by strict sets of compliance regulations. As these regulations continue to evolve, a legacy system may not be equipped to meet them.
Compliance regulations like the GDPR, for example, require a company to know (and prove) what customer data they have, where it is, and who is accessing it. Companies with customer data need to maintain well-governed records, which is much harder (if not impossible) in outdated, siloed systems.
4. Security gets weaker by the day
A data breach can cost a company dearly, and legacy systems are more vulnerable to hackers than newer systems. Legacy systems by definition have outdated data security measures, such as hard-coded passwords. That wasn’t a problem when the system was built, but it is now.
A legacy system not only leaves a company behind with old technology, it can also seriously damage a company’s reputation by putting data at risk of a breach. At some point, a vendor no longer supports the legacy system or provides much needed updates, opening the legacy system up to a security risk. Even if a critical update is available, installing it can be risky and is postponed for fear of breaking the system. As technology advances, risks increase for legacy systems.
5. New systems don’t integrate or legacy systems are hard to integrate
As a company matures, adding new systems is necessary to stay competitive in today’s world. But the older technology of a legacy system may not be able to interact with a new system. A department still using a legacy system won’t receive all the benefits that a new system offers.
Developing processes to make the systems work together is cumbersome and still leaves the company open to security risks. This causes an inability for technological growth within a company.
